Big salaries, a motorhome and SNP accounts: The Nicola Sturgeon interview unwrapped

Big salaries, a motorhome and SNP accounts: The Nicola Sturgeon interview unwrapped10 minutes agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleGetty ImagesSturgeon and Murrell were both important figures in the SNP for decadesFormer first minister Nicola Sturgeon spoke exclusively and in detail to the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg about the £400,000 embezzled by her estranged husband.Over a 12-year period, Peter Murrell - who was chief executive of the SNP for more than 20 years - spent party money on more than 1,000 items, from expensive coffee machines to a £124,000 campervan.Here we give some of the background to key quotes from the interview.'We were two people on high salaries'PA MediaNicola Sturgeon married Peter Murrell in 2010"None of these things [the purchases] I would have looked at and thought how on earth could he afford them? We were two people on high salaries. We don't have children. We didn't have an extensive social life, mainly because of the pressures of my job."Peter Murrell had been chief executive of the SNP for more than 20 years when he stood down in 2023. He reportedly earned £104,492 in 2011 but this fell to £79,750 by 2021.As for Sturgeon, the party published her tax details, covering the years 2014 to 2022. For 2021-22 she had a gross income of £140,496, paying just over £51,500 in income tax.The paperwork also showed she put large sums into her pension each year. Sturgeon was a member of the Scottish parliament for 27 years and for her nine years as FM she put more than £450,000 into her pension. She first published her tax returns in 2016, in the wake of the Panama Papers revelations, and during a Q&A in early February 2023 she urged other party leaders to do the same.At that same question and answer session she was asked about Murrell's 2021 loan of £107,000 to the SNP to help with "cash flow" following that year's Holyrood election campaign. Sturgeon said she could not recall when she first fo...